Another roundish number

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It’s funny, after you get into four-digit numbers, a hundred here or there doesn’t have the same impact. This is Day 2,200 of my 92-day challenge, the promise to myself back in 2020 that I would post something on this blog every day for at least three months. Seventy-two months is more than three.

I hit 2,100 consecutive daily posts on May 1, and while I usually check in when I reach a post that has two zeroes at the end, it just doesn’t feel as impressive as those posts with three zeroes, which only arrive every three years or so.

But this has been a pretty momentous 100 days.

I started reading again. Through the end of April, I had only read five books all year. That’s an abysmal number. I had been averaging more than a book a week for close to a decade before I tailed off and read only 31 books in 2025, but I was on track to finish 2026 with less than half of that sad number.

A guy who wants to write has to read. If you want your words to sing, you have to see how other conductors handle the orchestra. I knew one of my problems was that I had nearly stopped reading. And so I read five books in May, and 10 books in June, and five more in July. That felt better.

And maybe it showed and maybe it didn’t, but it felt like my writing got better as a result. After the anniversary of my last book release came and went, I started working harder on getting my next collection organized. I gave it a name — What I Came to Say — and stepped up my daily writing habit.

But I still was having trouble jumpstarting the daily writing habit I really wanted to practice — the storytelling. That breakthrough came this past week, and I wrote about that just a couple of days ago. Who would have thought the secret to writing stories was to stop talking about writing and just. start. writing? (Well, I think I reached that conclusion a long time ago, but saying and doing have always been two different things, haven’t they?)

If I ride the momentum from these past 100 days, then post number 2,300 should find us in the midst of all sorts of mischief and announcements and pronouncements, Lord willing and the creek don’t rise. (And as anyone who has listened to my latest album knows, it doesn’t even matter if the creek rises or not.)

I really do hope to enjoy the rest of my life as a prolific and productive artist — how many good books can a guy put out starting at age 73? It’s a wonderful question to explore.

Cause and effect

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There are lovely passages scattered throughout the apostle Paul’s letters about living a Christian life.

You know the type, and I quote them fairly often here …

“The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.”

“Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — if anything is excellent or praiseworthy — think about such things.”

And, of course, “clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.”

People often talk about Christians living boring lives, since they’re instructed to live like fuddy-duddies (or whatever the more modern word is for a life where you don’t get to do anything “fun”).

The truth is when you turn your life over to Christ, you tend to give up the “fun” stuff not because you’re being coerced, but because it doesn’t interest you anymore. When you’re overwhelmed with love, joy, peace and all those other fruitful things, there’s precious little time for what more worldly types might call “fun.”

Not much about this life is especially boring.

That time I just did it

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I was driving myself crazy again on Wednesday morning. As I do most days, I sat down with a paper journal and my favorite pen and started thinking on the page. I was unhappy with myself for spending too much time checking my “smart” phone and for having trouble coaxing my creative nature into writing stories — two ongoing challenges that have driven myself crazy over and over through the years.

I’ll let you listen in while I brainstormed solutions, because something magical suddenly happened.

“I have reduced my hours staring at the phone, but the laptop remains a source of distraction. If I could afford it — and if I believed I could maintain the discipline — I would buy a computer whose sole purpose would be as a writing instrument. When I opened the writing computer, it would be “word playtime” — period. Kind of like when I sit down with this journal … Hmmm …

“Maybe … Maybe I’m doing this all wrong. The Scarlet Letter and Moby Dick and Great Expectations were all written before typewriter keyboards — by hand — on paper — What if I were to write by hand — transfer the finished story to computer to clean it up?

“Part of me screams, ‘Stop talking about the process and just start writing, you fool, you cursed fool.”

And that’s when something magical happened.

I started writing a story. I filled five and a half pages of my journal with a brand new story. I listened to the part of me that was screaming, “Stop talking about the process and just start writing, you fool.” And what do you know? It was a great idea.

The story is not ready for prime time. It’s not finished by any stretch of the imagination. But when I stopped fretting about writing and just began to write, what do you know? I wrote.

I hope I can give this advice without infringing Nike’s trademark:

My fellow writers, stop worrying about writing.

Just do it.